Taiwan has been a fervent supporter of Parallax products for over six years. Our distributor, PlayRobot, does an excellent job supporting the local universities with their Parallax Certified Professional program. In Tawain, BASIC Stamps reign supreme!

Last month, Ken & I presented our new Propeller C educational program to students and professors at three universities: National Tsing-Hwa University, National Chiao Tung University, and the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. After all, it’s time for the Propeller to reign supreme! In total, we provided hands-on training to about 60 teachers and students, with very positive results.







Of course each presentation ended with an ELEV-8 flying demonstration with Ken’s beast of a quadcopter. Amazingly each flight went flawlessly, considering all parts were stuck in customs until only hours before the presentation – leaving no time for a test flight.







After each presentation, the hosting professors would graciously give us tours of their labs. There’s some very interesting and exciting research happening in Taiwan: from personal care robotics to coordinated aerial and ground-based robotics.








In all, we’re very grateful to Robert and Jelly of PlayRobot for arranging such fantastic opportunities. We left each student and professor excited about and eager for our new Propeller Education program. Stay tuned for more information on that front!

Parallax’s Engineering Technicians, Kevin and Nick, participated in the Multirotor Challenge 2013, put on by our friends at Innov8tive Designs. The event was held over the weekend (March 23 and 24) in Fallbrook, CA. As far as we know, this is the first of its kind in the U.S. For being a first time event there were a lot of people that took the time to participate and join this relatively new hobby.





The days were packed with exciting events, like the lifting competitions, pylon racing, autonomous landings and obstacle courses. These events really demonstrated the diversity of these platforms and how far multirotors have come in the past few years, with remote landings within a couple feet from their original starting point; during less than ideal wind conditions. The piloting skills were also well presented at the obstacle course and pylon racing where three racers would fly head to head at full speed around a set of stationary poles. Let’s not forget about the night flight event with large strings of LED’s hanging from the sky that could be seen by commuters on Interstate 15.

On Sunday, the last day of the event, awards were handed out for each of the events. Using Ken Gracey’s scaled up version of the ELEV-8 Quadcopter, Kevin and Nick won two trophies. One for “Largest Multirotor Flown” and the other for the “Deadlift Competition” where “The Beast”; as it’s called at Parallax, flew with an added 14.5 lbs!




This event was well worth the drive to southern California to join the ever expanding community of multirotor flyers, we highly recommend putting it on your calendar for next year!